Jon Krosnick (Applied Stats Workshop)
Date and Time
Location
Today's Speaker
Jon Krosnick, "Quizzes in Surveys and in Life: Challenges in Accurately Measuring People's Knowledge"
Abstract
Quizzes are central to contemporary education around the world and of great interest to researchers across the social sciences (in psychology, sociology, political science, health, business, and other fields) who want to assess knowledge levels, to be used as predictors of behavior or opinions (do people who understand health risks of smoking better smoke less?), as moderators of effects of treatments (are people who know a lot about politics less influenced by political ads?), as foci of interventions (does educating people about the Gaza conflict lead those people to change their sympathies?), and in other analytic ways. For decades, the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics has conducted national surveys measuring Americans’ knowledge about science. In NSF’s annual reports to Congress, the quiz results have been presented as simply documenting levels of information in the public and trends in such understanding. This talk will put a spotlight on the questions asked in these quizzes, highlight some ways in which the design of those questions violate what the questionnaire design literature suggests are best practices, and report a series of studies done to test for artifacts in the resulting measurements. The results are of value to any researchers who wish to make accurate measurements with questionnaires and give reason to pause when interpreting the results of existing surveys intended to document levels of knowledge about science.
Workshop Zoom link
https://harvard.zoom.us/j/92249492877?pwd=HYzHOx0PjJAsAPj8FSm1j2WTDzMr8…
The Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) meets all academic year, Wednesdays, 12pm-1:30pm, in CGIS K354. This workshop is a forum for advanced graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present and discuss methodological or empirical work in progress in an interdisciplinary setting. The workshop features a tour of Harvard's statistical innovations and applications with weekly stops in different fields and disciplines and includes occasional presentations by invited speakers.
All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.